Monthly Archives: July 2014

“Then the Philistines seized Samson, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza.” Judges 16:21.

Something about Gaza, and the way its Hamas bosses periodically goad Israel into military action, turn otherwise sensible observers into sightless chumps — incapable of distinguishing between initiating and responding to force, and blind to the difference between attempted murder and self-defense.

We see that day after day after day in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and other mainstream media outlets, which report on the crisis as if it were a contest between two antagonists competing on a morally level playing field. It appears in the television graphics of careful neutrality: charts showing the number of Israeli air strikes compared to the number of Hamas missiles and mortars; comparisons of the number of casualties on both sides; and reports on the relative suffering of the noncombatants.

This is nonsense. Three important principles underlie this crisis, which ought to be evident to anyone with eyes to see. First, there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Second, inchoate crimes are still crimes, and in wartime, they are war crimes. And third, “proportionality” has no proper role when thugs are trying to murder your children. Continue reading →